1840s Summary

During the 1840s, transportation of convicts to the east coast of Australia ended. This signified a change in status from a penal colony to a free society. The colonists wanted greater control over the political decision making in local affairs, and as an example of this new-found authority, Australia's first political election was conducted to vote in the mayor of Adelaide. The city had become Australia's first municipality, having acquired a population of more than 2,000 people. South Australia also became a Crown colony during the 1840s, thus losing its semi-independent status.

In the early 1840s groups known as 'overlanders' began driving thousands of cattle and sheep overland from one colony to another. Drovers risked attack from the Aboriginal clans whose land they were traversing and sometimes occupying. The squatters (land owners/occupiers) challenged new regulations imposed by Governor George Gipps (1791–1847) surrounding the land issue, and formed their own Mutual Protection Society. The exploration and renaming of the continent and its natural features continued during the 1840s, gradually pushing out the boundaries of the known area of each colony.

As colonisation expanded throughout the 1840s, and the British took ownership and control of the land without discussion or debate, Indigenous peoples continued to fight back to save their land and to survive. During the decade, many massacres took place across the country, the majority of which were unrecorded.